


make it look just the way i planned

by TheJGatsby



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Domestic, F/M, Getting Back Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 09:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7217098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJGatsby/pseuds/TheJGatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben buys the painting on a brokenhearted impulse, and somehow it ends up being exactly the right choice.</p><p>(Based on the song  Paint Me a Birmingham)</p>
            </blockquote>





	make it look just the way i planned

**Author's Note:**

> Title and concept from Paint Me a Birmingham by Tracy Lawrence

 

Ben doesn’t notice he’s stopped until the painter speaks to him.

“Can I help you?” His voice is gentle, welcoming, and Ben curses his open-book face for the billionth time. He’d paused to glance at the paintings set out on the sidewalk and the park bench, then stopped, and now he’s staring at them, a dozen houses of varying size and shape, a dozen idyllic frames, green grass or blue-white snow or the fire of autumn leaves, in one a pair of children sprawled out on the front steps, and Ben is responding before he can stop himself.

“Do you, uh,” he chokes out around the lump in his throat that seems ever-present these days, “do you take requests?”

“Sure. I’ll paint you anything.” Ben doesn’t really take in the details of the painter’s face, but he knows his smile is kind and there’s something sad and understanding in his eyes, and somehow it makes him feel less pathetic for getting all twisted up over paintings of fucking houses.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and swipes through to- there. Wide open front yard, porch disappearing around the side, white wood and an enormous live oak tree in front of the sitting room window, an ancient wooden rope swing dangling from it, put there by some family that had lived there years and years ago but still as strong as the day they hung it up.

The painter takes the phone from him, nodding thoughtfully. “Do you have about an hour to spare, or do you want to come back for it?”

“No, I’ll stay.” It’s not as if he has anywhere to be- he was on his way home anyway, and there's nothing waiting for him in his empty apartment but an unfinished and unspeakably dull dime novel. “Can you add something in?”

The painter smiles. “What's she look like?”

Ben ducks his head, embarrassed. “That obvious?”

“I know heartbreak when I see it, son.” Ben pulls out the photo he still keeps in his wallet, even now, because he can’t quite bring himself to get rid of it. That’d be too final, he thinks- he’s not ready to confront the reality of her not being in his life anymore at all, not even in the form of a faded, folded picture in his pocket.

She’s beautiful, in the photo, like she always was, but the reason he keeps it is because it captures her spirit in a way most still images can’t manage to, mainly because it looks as alive as a photograph can, as if he could just close his eyes and let out a breath and he’d be back there again, sitting in the long summer grass, watching her stretch up towards the sun, soft tan dress blowing gently around her soft tan legs, hair free in the breeze, face turned towards the sky. The painter looks at her for a long moment, then back up at Ben, and Ben hopes ardently that he’s keeping some imitation of a straight face.

“Where do you want to be in it?” he asks.

“Nowhere,” Ben replies, unthinking- somehow he doesn’t feel as if he belongs in the picture. “It’s- I mean, yeah. Nowhere.”

The painter stacks a couple of the canvases and gestures towards the bench. “Take a seat, son.”

For an hour Ben sits there and watches him paint. Somehow the painter knows exactly how it should look, makes it springtime, the grass green and dotted with wildflowers, the sunlight soft and cool, all the windows open. He loses himself in thought about halfway through, soothed by the steady and unhesitant motions of the painter’s brush, and then before he knows it the sun is settled low in the sky and the painter is getting his attention.

When Ben looks at the picture, it’s beautiful, but his eyes follow it to the place where the swing sits, and there’s Rey, rising from the swing and moving towards him, frozen in motion, and he could cry, because there was a place for him in the daydream after all. He settles for shaking the painter’s hand and paying him more than twice what he asks.

Ben doesn’t bother getting it framed, because there’s something about the raw, unfinished edges that appeals to him in its familiarity, something he can identify with, so he just hunts down a hammer and nails, hanging it carefully on the wall across from his bed. When he wakes up the next morning, it’s the first thing he sees, and the heartbreak is a little more sweet than bitter.

 

_ He probably isn’t even home _ , Rey thinks to herself, knuckles settled on the wood of his door, willing herself to either lift them and knock or turn around and leave.  _ You’ve been standing here for five minutes, make up your mind. _

She doesn’t have to, though, because a moment later the wood under her hand disappears and then she’s standing there with her fist in the air like a fool, face-to-face with him for the first time in too-long-but-not-long-enough.

“Hi,” she says weakly, eyes flickering away from the naked shock and confusion on his face. “I uh- left something here, a shirt, it- I was wondering if I could…?”

There’s a moment’s awkward pause, and then he’s nodding rapidly and stepping aside. “Yeah,” he says, “yeah, of course.”

_ See? _ she thinks to herself.  _ He’s fine. Perfectly well adjusted. You’re the mess here, Rey, just get your shirt and leave for good this time. _

At the same time, though, she knows him too well, knows his face and his mannerisms, knows that his tense shoulders and furrowed brow and rushed, breathless speech are not okay or well-adjusted. But this trip has one objective, and it’s not about a fucking shirt that she left behind accidentally-on-purpose that hasn’t fit in years and hasn’t been missed at all since the breakup.

She’s turned to leave the room when her eyes light on the painting- “That’s new,” she says to herself, and then a heartbeat later, “...Oh.”

Because she knows that house- it’s  _ their _ house. The one they spent months looking for, with the wraparound porch and the tree in the yard, big but not huge, more open land and empty space than unnecessary rooms, everything she’d ever dreamed of, hours and hours of talking and planning and wishing. There’s even the swing hanging from the tree, and- her. Her, in a tan dress with her hair loose like that photo he always kept in his wallet- does he still?- because he’s a sentimental bastard and he said it captured her spirit or some other sappy nonsense that made her grin at the time but now just makes her want to cry.

And it’s spring, in the painting, and she can almost smell it, the fresh grass and the wildflowers, can feel it under her fingers, the rough rope she’d run her hands over when they’d visited the house the last time, their last visit before they were supposed to start signing papers, and then-

She doesn’t realize she’s standing, staring, the shirt clutched in her hands tight enough to rip, until she hears his voice from the doorway. “Is everything- oh. Um. That’s just-”

“Did you even want the fucking house?” she asks, still not looking at him, eyes still fixed on the open windows in the painting, the smile on her face, blurry from either size or the tears in her eyes.

“You wanted it,” he replies, quiet, and that’s when she turns her gaze on him.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I want you to be happy,” he says. “If that meant buying a house….”

“You never cared about it, though.” She twists the shirt in her hands, remembering the I-want-a conversations, trying to remember if he’d ever said anything of his own, if he’d ever wanted something she didn’t, if he’d had an opinion beyond whatever would please her.

“It meant something to you,” he replies, carefully. “I… a house is just a place to live, to me. But it meant something to you, the porch and the tree and the yard.” She can almost predict the next words, like a car crash in slow motion. “I would have been happy in a fucking- a shack, or a mansion, or- it doesn’t matter, didn’t matter, as long as it had you.”

In the pause, she scrabbles in her mind, tries to remember why they’re even here, why they’re not in the house with the front yard swing and the open windows, why there’s so much distance between them, and all the carefully structured and very mature, logical reasons fall apart for what they are- excuses. She ran, because she was scared, because she was twenty-five and she was about to buy a  _ house _ and it felt for the first time like her future had a shape instead of just an open chasm.

“I didn’t come for the shirt,” she says, before she can stop herself, taking a step closer to him.

“I figured.” He steps into the room.

“I miss you.”

“Me too.”

There’s just a step between them, one more admission’s space to cover, and she can feel it heavy on her tongue, so she opens her lips and it falls out into the air between them. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” And then the space is gone.

 

The swing in the front yard broke a month after they moved in, the plank seat finally caving to age, sending Rey careening to the ground with a shriek that quickly became laughter. Ben put up a new one the next day, still wood and rope, a lot of frustrated cursing and Rey on the front porch with a fond smile and a glass of something cold, waiting for his stubbornness to run out.

Ben walks by the same park bench most days, and every day he looks for the painter, so he can stop and thank him, but he’s never there. The painting itself hangs in the front hallway, over the table where they keep car keys and wallets and a drawer full of the random detritus of their lives, destined to never be organized. It’s still unframed, because that was the one thing Ben wanted- Rey got her open windows, and Ben got his open edges, and they’re happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://thejgatsbykid.tumblr.com)!


End file.
